In a post on his X account on Thursday, Baqaei condemned the killing as part of a broader pattern of violence, stressing that targeting journalists constitutes not only a war crime but also a systematic effort to erase populations and advance territorial ambitions, while urging the international community to fulfill its moral and legal responsibility to act.
“Amal Khalil is not just a name — she was a voice for the voiceless who are brutalized by the occupying genocidal regime. And like so many before her, that voice is now silenced for telling the truth about the occupying regime's atrocities,” Baqaei said.
“Killing journalists is not merely an atrocious war crime; it is part of a cruel erasure of populations and annexation of territories in furtherance of a vicious colonial ambition,” he added.
“The world is morally and legally obliged to act against this continuing rule of cruelty.
Our deepest condolences to all Lebanese and to all who value truth, justice and humanity,” the Iranian speaker said.
Lebanon has accused the Israeli regime of crimes against humanity for killing journalist Amal Khalil and wounding her colleague Zeinab Faraj in an air strike in the village of al-Tayri in southern Lebanon.
Khalil and Faraj were reporting on an earlier Israeli attack on a vehicle on Wednesday, when they were targeted while fleeing towards a building to take shelter.
Khalil was killed in what Lebanese officials described as a “double-tap” strike in al-Tayri.
Born in 1984 in Baysariyyeh, southern Lebanon, she had covered the region for Al Akhbar since the 2006 war. Her latest reporting focused on Israeli demolitions of homes in villages where Israeli troops are positioned inside Lebanon.